Editing Northern Counties Committee (section)

===Post-war era===
Large-scale troop movements and additional passenger and freight traffic had ensured the NCC's prosperity during World War II. The ending of hostilities, however, saw passenger and goods traffic receipts decline rapidly as fuel for road transport became available.

Despite the worsening financial situation, the NCC introduced a number of measures in an attempt to improve the railway's competitive position. Services were accelerated and, although the poor condition of the track due to deferred maintenance meant that it was not possible to attain pre-war timings, strenuous efforts were made to ensure that trains adhered to the published schedules.

In 1944 the NCC had decided that its system should be worked by tank engines and placed an initial order for four locomotives to be built at Derby and erected in Belfast. The first of these [[NCC WT Class|WT Class 2-6-4 tank]] locomotives were delivered in the late summer of 1946. Additional orders followed and by the end of 1947 ten engines were in service. Passenger rolling stock was augmented by eight elderly ex-Midland Railway coaches from the LMS which were refurbished in Belfast and fitted with salvaged {{convert|5|ft|3|in|m|abbr=on}} gauge bogies.

A start was made on restoring the permanent way and air-raid damage at York Road station was repaired.

The company's hotels, which had closed during the war years, were reopened to the public by mid-1947 although the Midland Station Hotel in Belfast, which had suffered severe damage during the 1941 Blitz, was not fully operational. Paths and bridges at Glenariff were repaired but the Gobbins cliff path, on which maintenance had ceased in 1942, would not reopen under NCC management.

The Northern Ireland Government resumed its deliberations into the transport situation that had been postponed during the war. It published a [[White Paper]] in 1946 that proposed the amalgamation of the BCDR, the NCC and the NIRTB, together with that portion of the GNR(I) which lay in Northern Ireland, into a single organisation to be known as the [[Ulster Transport Authority]] (UTA). In the event, however, the GNR(I) was to be excluded from the provisions of The [[Transport Act (Northern Ireland) 1948]] (c. 16 (N.I.)) and when the UTA came into existence on 1 April 1948, only the [[Belfast and County Down Railway|BCDR]] and the NIRTB would be absorbed at first; the NCC's British connection meant that there was a delay in its acquisition by the new organisation.